During Columbia City Manager Mike Matthes’ state of the city address this week, he highlighted an increase in the number of black students graduating from the Columbia Public School District.

Megan Favignano @MFavignano

During Columbia City Manager Mike Matthes’ state of the city address this week, he highlighted an increase in the number of black students graduating from Columbia Public Schools.

CPS Superintendent Peter Stiepleman said a high school diploma is imperative to improving the lives of Columbia citizens. He cited information given at the city’s homelessness conference last year that said without a high school diploma, people are likely to earn around $17,000 but with a high school diploma, that average earning goes up to about $24,000.

“You’re getting closer to a living wage,” he said

The graduation rate for CPS in 2016 was 90.1 percent for the entire district, which is a 5.3 percentage point increase from 2012. The graduation rate among the district’s white students remains higher than that of the district’s black students, however the discrepancy has narrowed in recent years.

In Columbia Public Schools last year, the graduation rate for black students was 80.9 percent, according to the Missouri Department of Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. That’s about 13 percentage points above the 2012 graduation rate of 67.7 percent for black students.

The graduation rate for white students also has risen during that time, but not as much. The graduation rate among white students in the district last year was 93 percent, according to the Missouri Department of Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. In 2012, the graduation rate for white students was 89.9 percent.

“Our goal is that all of our students are going to graduate college and career ready,” Stiepleman said. “And in order to do that we focus on three things: we want to make sure that we are getting our kids to school, that we’re keeping them in class and that we’re focused on catching them up.”

About half of the country’s states, including Missouri, are on track to reach a 90 percent graduation rate by 2020, according to the GradNation campaign. The campaign shows that nationwide, the class of 2015, the most recent year listed in the campaign’s figures, had a graduation rate of 83.2 percent. Missouri’s graduation rate for that year was above the national average at 87.8 percent.

Getting the graduation rate up, Matthes said, is a critical part of improving the lives of Columbia residents.

“A high school graduate has a good chance, if they grab it, of living a life of meaning out of poverty,” Matthes said during his speech. “Without a high school diploma, you're very nearly guaranteed a life sentence of poverty.”

Helping citizens get out of poverty has been a focus for Columbia officials. The city’s current strategic plan outlines priorities which Matthes said should help narrow the gap between what he calls the two Columbias — or the gap between those living in poverty and the city’s wealthier residents.

It’s unknown how much funding those initiatives may receive in the city’s upcoming budget cycle. Matthes this week warned of the growing impact of the online shopping boom, which means less sales tax dollars going to local governments.

Stiepleman said he hopes to see the number of residents who believe they can “thrive” in Columbia increase. In Matthes’ state of the city address last year, he said 78 percent of white citizens believe they can thrive but only 54 percent of black citizens think the same.

“When you start thinking about poverty and inequality, you start looking at how those discrepancies come about,” Stiepleman said.

Education, he said, is the key to improving that inequality. Closing the achievement gap, or the difference in academic achievement between poor and minority students and wealthier, white students, has been a focus for the district.

Stiepleman said the district allows students to complete online coursework to accelerate or make up lost credit.

“We’re committed to finding lots of different ways to make sure that our students have access to school,” he said.

And if a child is at risk of not graduating, he said CPS works to change that. If a student receives an “F,” Stiepleman said the schools work to figure out what that student needs to learn to reduce future failing grades in coursework.

While the district’s graduation rate among black students has risen, the state’s annual performance report for CPS shows minority students in 2016 earned fewer academic achievement points than in 2015.

In the APR, the super subgroup students — black students, Hispanic students, students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, English language learners and special education students — earned 39.3 percent of possible points in 2016 compared to 46.4 percent in 2015.

The academic achievement number for all students in CPS’s APR was 91.1 percent last year and 87.5 percent in 2015.

mfavignano@columbiatribune.com

573-815-1719

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